The mother of a two-year-old boy who died after swallowing methadone has said she was looking for somewhere safe to put the drug when she put it in the child's beaker.

Sally Dent is on trial at Nottingham crown court with her partner, Shaun Binfield, charged with the manslaughter of their son Riley Pettipierre in March last year.

Dent, 33, told the jury she came home from her local Boots on 12 March with three bottles of methadone, which she had been prescribed. The court heard that she had been addicted to heroin since she was 16 and was struggling to kick the habit. She told the court she regularly sold some of her methadone to other addicts to make extra cash.

She went into the kitchen of the family's two-bedroom flat in Belper, Derbyshire, and poured some of two of the bottles into a green and yellow child's beaker. She then topped the two methadone bottles up with water ready to sell as untouched, the court heard.

"I was just thinking of somewhere safe to put it because the lid was so tight on it that I knew it wouldn't spill," she said. She would usually have used an empty methadone bottle but she did not have any at hand. She said she then put the beaker on a window sill where Riley could not get to it, before returning to her family in the living room.

Dent told the court she would always take the drug in the kitchen, ensuring the baby gate and kitchen door was closed behind her, while Binfield, 45, looked after Riley in the living room.

Dent said she had been clean since Riley's death.

The pair deny manslaughter. Dent denies a second charge of child cruelty to a person under the age of 16 as it is alleged she failed to ensure Riley was kept away from class A drugs. The same charge against Binfield was dropped after the judge, John Milmo QC, ruled there was insufficient evidence. The trial continues.